A love letter to the ones doing their personal work

 

To the ones who are earnestly doing their work,

Heads down,

Hearts open,

Bleeding,

Writhing,

Grieving,

Changing.

And not necessarily talking about it,

And not necessarily posting about it.

But showing up every day to their Life and Process.

 

To the ones doing the holy, quiet labor of unraveling who they learned themselves to be,

In a Zoom room, on someone’s floor or couch, in a voice note, in their relations, in the arms of a friend or Beloved, in the quiet of their own heart, in the depths of their own pain, in their journals, in ceremony, with their head in a toilet purging.

To the ones who are saying “no” for the first time to the drink, the puff, the fleeting hit of validation, the Tinder message, the situationship, the boundaryless family member, the hateful joke or passing comment, the unaligned career.

To the ones who are saying “no” even when their voice shakes and their heart is beating out of their chest as they do it. Even when they actually need recovery time after to show their body they made it and are ok.

To the ones who are quietly and skillfully coming in contact with their shadow, their darkness, their OWN capacity for harm.

The ones who refuse to dehumanize another because they are in the realization that doing so is just dehumanizing themselves

To the ones who have put down “being good” as an identity, and have become more interested in what is TRUE.

To the ones who bravely say, “I want to deeply know my self and Self, no matter how hard it is to look at. No matter how cringey.

I want to know. Show me.“

To the ones who have spent their lives seeking safety in isolation who are now asking for what they need, hiring support, opening up, being vulnerable, going first, crying in public, naming what they want and deserve in their relationships, and putting themselves in the ring and charnel ground of rupture and repair. 

To the brave and courageous ones who have learned that their work is THEIRS to do, AND... that they cannot do it alone.

To the ones who are descending into the body for the first time in their life.

For the ones making the voyage down and in and passing up the all too common trap and New Age temptation of “ascension” up and out.

To the ones who are INCLUDING the body, the small parts, the density, the uncomfortability, the nervous system responses, the shame, the guilt, the horror, the disgust, the terror. To the ones who are taking it all with them and not turning away from the body, even when the body feels more like a war zone.

To the ones who are feeling deeply for the first time,

To the ones who are sometimes overwhelmed by just how much is there,

But who are holding steady,

Slow by slow,

Brick by brick,

Hand in hand.

Going towards what is Real.

Going towards the body.

Going towards the map of what happened through the soma.

In this life, in the ancestors’ lives, in the collective, in past lives.

To the ones who are speaking things they’ve never spoken before,

Naming the incredibly unevolved truths of the small parts,

Letting all of it be seen, known, and witnessed.

To the ones who are letting the shame melt away like honey,

And feeling the relief of ending the life-long performance.

To the ones finally telling the stories that have laid dormant in their bones for years, festering and deteriorating the cells from the inside out.

To the ones who are speaking the words that have been frozen inside of their throats.

And making art,

Sound,

Expression,

Writing,

Movement,

Weeping,

Cumming,

Divining,

Praying,

Creating

Out of the raw materials of the turmoil within.

To the alchemists,

Who know that the seat of the pain is the seat of the power.

And who are skillfully traversing these landscapes every damn day.

Within the confines of their own hearts.

To the ones who feel like they have never belonged

Who have spent their lives in the reenactment of playing this out,

And finding themselves in places to be mirrored back this unTruth.

To the ones who are choosing a new Path,

With the support of the luminosity of Awareness.

To the ones who are seeking evidence AGAINST this wound,

Finding places where their innate belonging is mirrored back to them.

Poking holes in the story,

Showing the flimsy nature of the wound,

And fully seeing the self-fulfilling prophesy of such a limited belief.

To the ones who are brave enough to seek the experience of belonging.

To allow themselves to receive this gift.

Even when it feels like dying.

To the ones who have always felt like they are not enough,

Who have spent their lives striving for more and better,

Perfect, successful, thin, sexy, intelligent, aspirational.

Who have grown too weary to continue this way,

And have made the choice to stop striving,

Or rather, their body has decided - “enough”

To recognize the trauma response of ambitious and the hungry ghost of “more.”

To the ones coming into radical acceptance,

Not in defeat,

But in dignity.

To the ones who are learning that acceptance is not passive,

But rather,

The only way to access Truth and Presence.

The only skillful place to act from.

To the ones who are doing less,

Being more,

Titrating their tolerance for time deeply inward,

And with themselves and the body.

To the ones who are learning for the first time - how to BE.

Or rather, remembering.

To the ones facing the shame or guilt at just how hard this is,

And doing it anyway.

To the ones who are earnestly training their system to stay,

To be.

To quiet the mind.

To touch Reality.

To allow.

To receive.

To meet their Beingness.

No matter how confronting the journey is.

To the avoidants,

Who learned safety through distance,

Who are slowly letting someone close enough

To be seen, to be known,

To let love in without losing themselves.

That their safety is not dependent.

To the anxious,

Who learned safety through merging,

Who are learning to stay with the space,

To trust the pause,

To know they are safe in the silence.

That their safety is not dependent.

To the disorganized,

Who have known love as danger,

and danger as love -

Who are now untangling the two,

And teaching the bodymind that Love & Safety have always been the perfect and most natural pair.

 To the ones who are showing up to Relating with an earnest desire for a new way, in spite of the discomfort and messy nature of this dance.

 To the codependents,

Who learned that love is a game of bad trades

and safety lies in self-abandonment.

Who are learning now to know where they end and another begins,

The ones who still feel the pull to take care of, overgive, fix, or merge,

and are choosing Truth instead.

Who are learning that love does not require shrinking,

That there is no peace in pleasing,

That boundaries are holy.

To the ones rewriting their propensity for intensity,

Who no longer confuse intensity for intimacy,

And no longer confuse lack of conflict for closeness,

The ones who are learning what Love is,

Unconditional.

To the ones who are doing the unglamorous and excruciating work of incinerating the old program of relating, in favor of the possibility of a new way.

 To the addicts,

Who found comfort in numbness,

When nothing else felt safe enough to rely on.

Who are learning now to meet themselves sober, raw, alive

The ones who are sitting in the Being that they once ran from,

And getting curious about the hungry ghost inside.

The ones releasing the shame of the addiction monster,

And meeting themselves with compassion for the first time.

The ones who are trading numbness for feeling,

Even when it feels like dying.

To the survivors of s xual harm

Who had their boundaries crossed,

Their innocence taken,

Their body turned into a receptacle of confusion and fear against their will.

Who are slowly, bravely learning to come home again -

To feel safe in their own skin,

In the world

With men

With women

With people

To learn their “no”

To learn their “yes”

To the ones reclaiming their body and yoni as sacred ground.

The ones who keep choosing Life,

Pleasure,

Truth,

and Wholeness,

Against all odds.

To the ones who were victimized,

Who know the taste of powerlessness,

The shock, the freeze, the shame.

Who were forced to carry what was never theirs -

And are now laying it down, one by one.

To the ones who refuse to let that truth become an identity.

Who honor what happened without making it who they are.

Who grieve deeply, feel fully,

And still choose to orient to a life beyond the wound.

The ones who bravely speak their truth and story without being defined by it.

To the Lovers,

Who let their hearts be broken open over and over again,

Who show up fully even when it hurts,

The ones who have not been hardened,

Whose hearts have broken open wider to include more,

The ones who continue to choose to open.

To the lighthouses that we all need.

To the ones who have stopped externalizing and outsourcing,

 

Who no longer look for the cause or the cure outside themselves.

To the ones who have earnestly taken the inward turn.

Who see all of life as a mirror,

Ever trigger as teacher,

Every shadow as a doorway.

Every sensation as a friend.

 To the ones who no longer chase the “other” for completion,

But meet the reflection with radical honesty.

No hope, no fear.

 

To the ones who hold themselves accountable,

In deep integrity.

Not from a place of shame,

But from a deep and unwavering devotion to truth.

The ones who are interested in cutting through the illusion of projection.

And thus, experiencing freedom.

 To the ones who are glimpsing Reality and Self,

Who catch the brilliance of who and what we truly are,

And let those glimpses guide them,

Not as a destination, but as a compass.

To the ones who feel the vastness behind the smallness,

The brilliance and luminosity beyond the darkness,

The all-consuming silence behind the all-consuming noise.

To the ones who are aligning their lives with that knowing.

Reorganizing their lives around their Soul’s knowing.

To the ones who move through the world differently now,

Less grasping, less hiding,

More presence, more Awareness,

Letting insight and intuition lead the way.

Despite not knowing how it will turn out.

To the ones who have had to burn down their lives,

Again and again,

Who intimately know the grief of letting go

of what once felt safe, familiar, or certain.

To the ones who released old identities, roles, relations, timelines, worlds,

The expectations of others, family, society, the world,

Who frequently watch parts of themselves go up in flames,

Making way for something truer, wilder, freer,

To the ones who grieve, rage, and falter,

And still keep stepping into the unknown,

Trusting in whatever remains when the dust settles.

To the ones who have let go of expectation,

Who are carving their own path,

Who are more interested in their unique Life Path and purpose than worldly success,

To the ones who trust their inner guidance,

And the ones who are learning to again.

Who move through life more interested in Truth than approval,

Who honor the quiet longings of their own soul,

Even when it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

To the ones who choose authenticity over comfort.

 

I see you.

I honor you.

I am inspired by you.

And I’m walking beside you.

 

Let’s keep going.